Trick Or Tweek
by DeusBex
Summary: What started as a Halloween camping trip ends in disaster.
1. The Key To Happiness

Anxiety: it was like a rat, gnawing away at the nape of my neck as though it were a piece of cheese, sending waves of sheer displeasure down my spine. As with cheese, I felt smaller with every mouthful and more vulnerable. These 'waves' were almost like a shiver, but perhaps the proper term was a twitch or a nervous tick, and it was something that I had become known for amongst my small group of friends. We all had our defining characteristics. There were five of us in total: Clyde, Jimmy, Token, Craig, and me - Tweek Tweak. We had each known each other for many years, having been friends since the fourth grade, and we hung out almost every day. Clyde was the classic lady's man, always dressing to impress in a designer burgundy coat (when he wasn't wearing the high school's varsity sports jacket) and greyish-brown chinos. However, underneath this jock-like persona of sports, girls and fashion, there was something more. I had never really asked him about his health. None of the other guys had either and, in hindsight, I think that's what he liked about us. His colostomy in the fourth grade, which at the time I hadn't the faintest idea about, or the rumours of only having one testicle were never questioned. Despite whatever difficulties he was apparently facing with his health though, it never once affected his strong sense of morality. Out of all of us, he was the one whom you could trust most to do the 'right' thing. Jimmy, meanwhile, was a cripple. On paper, that might sound like a harsh way of putting it, but he owned the term with confidence and never allowed it to stop him doing whatever the hell he wanted. There was also Token, the black kid, although he was anything but an African-American stereotype: wealthy, cultured, and frankly a total 'smart-ass' (as Cartman had so often put it). Then, last but not least, there was Craig...

How do I describe him? After all, he was always the hard-to-read, stoic sort, with a tough outer shell that was prone to flipping people off and a cynical outlook on the world. Underneath that, however, there was the cutesy, soft inside that only I knew as his boyfriend. We'd been together since the fourth grade, back when our peers (and what seemed like the entire town), had conspired to bring us together after seeing some artwork from the Asian girls at school. At first, we were only together to make everyone else happy, but once we got to know each other we soon couldn't stand to be apart. I loved Craig Tucker. I loved his masculine features, from his deep voice to his height; I loved his 'bad boy' exterior and how he would never shy away from a fight; I loved his mesmerising, sea blue eyes. In fact, it was those very eyes I was admiring, as we rode together in the back seat of Token's car towards the mountains which littered the horizon. It was Halloween and we'd decided to go camping. The other guys were excited for an evening of ghost stories and no parents. Craig and I, meanwhile, were just eager to have our own tent, our own private space for our own private things.

By the time we arrived at the outskirts of the woods which surrounded the mountains of South Park and began to unload our tents, it was already around mid-evening. The sun was setting, dimming so that it cast beautiful shades of orange across the countryside landscape, which complimented the autumnal shades of the leaves that we trampled underfoot. It would have been a picturesque scene, if not for the sight of me struggling to unfurl a tent, failing miserably, and then collapsing to the floor in resignation. "Gah! How does anyone do this!? I just can't," I blurted out, twitching subconsciously as always when I was frustrated or anxious. I dropped onto my back, lying in a wet pile of leaves but not caring with my focus being firmly upon setting up the tent, and sighed as I looked up at the dull red sky. What was the saying: 'red sky at night, shepherd's delight' or something? Well, for me, that certainly wasn't proving to be the case! I stood and tried again to set up the tent to no avail. Suddenly, in the midst of my frustration, there came a nudge in the side of my ribs. "What's up, dude?" It was Clyde, of course. He always knew when something was wrong and something most definitely was. For Craig and I, Halloween was a big deal: our anniversary. With Craig out of earshot, I explained this to Clyde. I felt stupid, like some hapless old romantic or one of those pathetic lovestruck pensioners you see on shows such as Catfish. It was just a camping trip, after all - nothing too serious or romantic.

"Why didn't you say so? I can handle your tent, if you want," he offered, forcing a grin, which I returned. Clyde really was a great guy. I gave him a (platonic) hug, said thanks, and darted off to find Craig. The group's resident 'bad boy' wasn't setting up a tent, instead off exploring the woods, and I found him by a lake. The waters looked cold, a thin layer of ice forming around the edges where it met dry land, but they were still and calm. A few leaves had fallen and settled peacefully atop it, whilst off in the distance light cascaded through the wooded foliage, causing beams of light to shoot off in all directions. It was silent, until Craig broke it with a 'hey'. "It's our anniversary," I began to explain, twitching nervously, but I was cut off abruptly by lips pressing tightly against mine. Craig was kissing me. My entire body was on fire, searing with pleasurable warmth that emanated from Craig and into me. I groaned with pleasure, pushing myself into him, and burying my head into his chest. I inhaled, deeply, enjoying his distinct scent. "Like I would forget," he mumbled, falling back onto the grassy slope which surrounded the lake and pulling me down with him. I fell atop him, onto his chest, but I didn't move. We stayed there, lying together at the edge of the lake, for as long as we could. In this position, I could feel the contours of his lean body and stare up into those sea blue eyes. It was heaven.

Eventually, after the sun had set, we slunk back to camp to find our tent already built. It was the largest, having to accommodate two of us instead of just one, in our row of four tents. Clyde had came through on his offer, thankfully, which meant we had somewhere to sleep. I sighed, relieved and thankful, before diverting my attention to the lit fire which crackled soothingly a few metres away from all of our tents. Token, Clyde and Jimmy were already sat around it. We joined them, sitting together on an old, hollow log that the guys had dragged over earlier. Clyde handed me a large flask, which I immediately began to sip from. It was caffeine! My friends knew me too well. After all, if anxiety was like a rat, then coffee was my 'rat poison'.

I hated creepy stories, but it was Halloween, so it didn't take long for the guys to start. Token, being the 'smart-ass' that he was, seemed to know the most and took the lead. "There lived a man, happy but unfulfilled. He had a seemingly perfect life: the perfect job, the perfect house, and the perfect family. However, he wanted more. It always felt like something, a hole in his heart that couldn't be filled, was missing. One day, on his way to work at the office, he came across a homeless beggar on the street. He normally paid them no attention, or at best gave them a few dollars before walking on, but for some reason he found himself stopping for this one. The beggar gave him a key, an ordinary-looking bronze key. However, as the beggar soon explained, it wasn't ordinary. 'This key is special. If you find the door it unlocks, then you will have everything you could ever need or want. It is a key to happiness. Behind it, there lives a family who will help you. The wife in particular gets lonely whilst the man of the house is away at work, so take it. You look like a man in need of some pleasure, and she can help you, like she helped me.' At first, the man ignored the key and went about his daily life. Curiosity soon overwhelmed him though and he became obsessed. Everyday, he would search for the door which the key opened, moving from house to house across the town. When he stopped showing up for work, he lost his job. When he stopped showing up for dinner, he lost his wife. When he stopped showing up for birthdays, he lost his kids. The divorce was quickly finalised and the man went to collect his belongings. As the only house left in town which he hadn't tried the key in, he inserted it into the keyhole. It clicked. They found his body a few days later, drowned in the nearby river, his lifeless hand still clutching the very key that had forsaken him."

The story was more upsetting than actually scary - not that I minded. I still twitched nervously throughout, afterwards deciding that I had had enough scary stories and leaving the guys to it. Squeezing Craig's hand reassuringly before I left, I shot him a 'I'll be back' smile and then went for a walk. I found my way back to the lake. The winds had picked up and, in the opening of the lake, they buffeted at my already messy blond hair, which I promptly set about trying to correct. Suddenly, there came a noise. It sounded like a whimper. Was it an animal? Had a bird broken its wing? It was too loud for that though. Confused, I scanned the area. There was nobody. Only, of in the distance, what looked like a jacket thrown out across the grass. It was burgundy! That was Clyde's jacket! Worried, I ran, grabbed it, and then looked around. Twitching anxiously, I began to call out his name. "Clyde! Are you out here? Clyde!" There was no answer.


	2. Explorers Of The Stars

'When things go south, breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth' was what one of my many therapists had taught me. Over the years, thanks to my anxiety, I'd had a lot of them. However, they never really helped. I needed - no, craved - caffeine to sate my feelings of anxiousness. It was the only cure. My hands were shaking and my heart pounding, as though at any given moment it could have erupted out of my chest, but I had to remain calm. I had to stay strong. My friend was, potentially, in danger. Why else had fashion-conscious Clyde, of all people, left his expensive designer coat out in the middle of the woods? Cradling the coat in my arms as though it were an abandoned baby, partly for comfort and partly because my fumbling hands could no longer hold anything securely, I began to search the area. Nothing looked out of the ordinary or, apart from the decreasing light as night fell, any different from earlier. The lake's water was still motionless, thin layers of ice undisturbed by its edges, and there were no signs of any disturbance whatsoever. Despite this, the whimper persisted. I began to follow it, deeper into the woods, in hope of finding Clyde.

Past the opening for the lake, and by this point a fair distance from where we had set up camp, the woods became far more dense. The trees surrounded me on all sides, looming intimidatingly above like hungry predators, and no light penetrated the thick foliage. I was struggling just to see a few metres in front of me, pulling Clyde's coat closer and closer to my chest, as though cuddling it could somehow resolve the troubling situation. Leaves crunched underfoot as I swatted away at plants and bushes which obstructed my path. Screech! Suddenly, there came a winged rodent, swooshing past my head in a blur and making me fall backwards in shock. I landed on my back with a thud, groaning almost instantly from both shock and pain. What was I doing? Was I insane? The woods sprawled on for miles and, in the dark without a map or any sense of direction, there was little hope of actually finding Clyde - only getting lost myself, instead. I decided to turn around, hoping against all odds that he was somehow still back at camp, and that this was all just some nightmare. My body ached, partly from the fall and partly from the anxiety weighing down upon me, so I walked slowly and thought things through. Clyde was still at the camp, listening contently to Token's ghost stories, when I left. Even if he had followed me shortly after, for whatever reason, how did he manage to beat me to the lake? It made no sense!

Wincing with the worsening pain, I eventually made it back to camp. It only took a few seconds for Craig to register a look of concern and run over. The concoction of pain and worry was deadly, pushing me over the edge when I realised that Clyde wasn't there. "C-Clyde," I stammered out, wiping away a few tears from my cheek. "I f-found his jacket... then there was some noise, but I c-couldn't find him."

"Hmm. He said he was going to find you. We should go look for him," remarked Token - ever the smart, rational and calm one. It annoyed me when people could stay calm so easily. They didn't have a 'rat' gnawing at their nape, weakening them, making them smaller. They were my friends, sure, but it didn't stop me feeling jealous. I sighed, only faintly such that the others didn't hear it, and then nodded in agreement. "Right," he began, looking at Jimmy, presumably contemplating how the crutch-dependent teen could possibly navigate the dense woodland. After a few moments, however, we were each assigned roles: Token himself was to search further in the woods, Jimmy to wait near the lake in case Clyde came back for his jacket, and I was to stay at camp. Though I felt selfish for doing nothing, between the pain from the fall and my anxiety over Clyde, it really was for the best. I was a wreck. Meanwhile, Craig was having none of it; he refused to leave my side to help Token, even when I interjected to the contrary."No. I'm not leaving you, alone. Not when you can't even run properly."

Jimmy and Token left. It was just me and him: my Craig. That very guy I had fallen for in the fourth grade, only now taller, with some stubble and muscle, was sat opposite as we shared the fire's warming glow. His black hair glistened, almost like marble in the orange hue of the fire, which crackled soothingly against the faint sounds of nature - crickets, chirping birds, and so on. In any other circumstance, one where our friend wasn't missing, such a scenario would have been romantic. "Tweek," he cooed, shuffling over to me to wrap an arm around my shoulder. I pushed my head into his chest, tears streaming down my face, and closed my eyes to reminisce. Perhaps I was being melodramatic, but Clyde was my best friend. Whereas Craig was more than a friend, Token could be an annoying 'smart-ass' sometimes and Jimmy had a propensity for trouble, such as when he'd started taking steroids to win the Special Olympics, Clyde was just always there and always doing the right thing. He really was my best friend and the thought of anything happening to him filled my heart with dread. What was even wrong? The unknown was what made it particularly frightening.

"Do you remember when we were kids? When we used to play spacemen? You were always terrified," he stated, monotonously and so matter-of-factly that I knew it wasn't a serious question, for how I could I forget? After all, we were Captain Craig and Spaceman Tweek: venturers of space, saver of worlds, explorers of the stars! Well, he was the 'saver', whilst I was more the frightened tag-along. Sort of like Shaggy in the old Scooby-Doo cartoons, which were yet another distant memory of my childhood. Things seemed so much simpler back then, when our biggest concern was sledding, video games, or whatever the weekly fad was. I looked up at the very stars which we once ruled. They twinkled brightly, each one representing another galaxy, and each of those with its own cluster of planets. Perhaps, somewhere out in the infinite abyss, there were others like us. Perhaps, unlike our childhood games, there really was nothing - only barren wastelands filled with 'space dust'. Regardless, it was sweet of him to try and calm my nerves - not that he had to try. He was freaking Craig Tucker!

I murmured an 'I love you' into his chest and, just like that, I was dragged into our tent. Soon, our bodies were entwined in one another; our passion knew no bounds. Amidst our pleasured groans, however, there came the sound of footsteps. Leaves could be heard crunching underfoot, as whoever, whatever, approached - nearer and nearer and nearer. "Guys! You need to come, quick!" Then, however unprepared for it we were, we ran.


	3. True Horror

I ran. Ran faster than I ever had before, my little legs pushing their hardest to keep up with Craig's larger strides, and every few seconds he shot a concerned stare back at me as if to ask whether I could keep up. Gritting my teeth in pain, as my back was still sore and bruised from the earlier fall, I looked up as I ran - out to the millions of stars which littered the sky like candles on some infinitely large birthday cake. How old must the universe have been to warrant so many? Somehow, it gave me comfort to think of that, of how our events right now were only temporary, and how eventually we'd be happier or even dead. Either way, this awful worry would not - no, could not - last forever. I soon arrived, behind Token in front and then Craig, at the lake. Jimmy, being on crutches and so slower, had obviously stayed there. He came over as we entered the opening. "W-what's the matter? C-Clyde," I asked as my eyes darted between the three of them.

Bang! Birds erupted from the trees, shooting off in all directions like comets, a stream of feathers against the moonlit sky. I jumped back, for once not the only one in my group to do so either, and gasped as I caught sight of a brown-haired teen walking out of the trees. It was Clyde! We all examined him from a distance. Except, something was wrong - very, very wrong. His face was cut and bruised, black blotches forming across it, and his shirt ripped slightly. His eyes were red; he'd been crying. In his hand, there glinted something silver. Bang! Another shot went off and the world slowed to a crawl...

There was blood. It splattered across the previously undisturbed grass, bright red blotches against shades of dark green, as though the landscape were some toddler's finger painting. Sadly, the reality was far less innocent. I gasped, at first reaching down to feel my body to check if it had been aimed at me, and then relaxing somewhat until I caught sight of the others. Token's mouth was agape, Craig's face a pasty white and drained of all colour, whilst Jimmy's was splattered with blood. The crippled teenager, weak and unable to hold his crutches properly, dropped to his feet as blood poured - almost waterfall like - from his wound. Token was the first to snap out of the trance, running over to Jimmy, looking overwhelmed as he examined the wound. "O-oh God... what d-do we do!?"

"Keep pressure on the wound," barked Craig as his gaze averted first to me, shooting a concerned look, and then across the lake to Clyde. The shooter had fallen to his knees now, crying into cut hands. Within moments, Craig had ran around the lake and grabbed Clyde by the scruff of his t-shirt collar. Crack! Craig's strong hands clenched into a fist and smashed into Clyde's already injured face. Crack. It's too much pressure. Crack. Everything's spinning around me. Crack. There's blackness, for I'm not sure how long exactly, but then there's light again. I'm suddenly lying on my back across the grass, which feels good given how running hadn't helped its pain, and looking up at Craig. His blue eyes are glistening in the moonlight, a forced grin plastered on his face when my eyes flutter open, and a cut under his eye - perhaps Clyde had hit back earlier. He pulled me into him, but I was too busy looking over his shoulder at the chaos around us. Police sirens wailed faintly in the distance. There were men - actual men, around thirty or forty, not my teenage friends - dressed in blue.

It wasn't long before we were all herded into the back of police cars.


	4. Epilogue & Author's Notes

"T-that's my...statement," I explain, handing the officer across the table from me a piece of paper, which I have spent the last hour or so writing my account of events that night upon. I twitch, tugging at my scruffy blond hair - even scruffier than usual as it has gone without washing for a few days. He nods at me and, just like that, I'm free to go. I want to say that the Halloween ordeal is finally over, but I know that it isn't. I learned that night that true horror comes from people, and not ghost stories, but I still didn't know what had motivated Clyde to do what he did. Only time will tell...

* * *

 _Apologies for the rushed ending, everyone! I know that the quality of this story dropped dramatically after the first chapter, but that's because I've decided to write a far more meatier story. It'll be a sequel to this, although it'll recap everything here in far greater detail. However, I didn't just want to leave an unfinished story on this site. There are enough of those! If you enjoyed this story, even if just a little bit, then please, please, please head over to my profile and check out my other stories - one of which will include a proper novel-length Creek fan-fiction once I start to work on it. Thanks for your support!_


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